


Intake

by nijicx_but_written



Category: Original Work, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Digital Art, F/M, Heroes & Heroines, Heroes to Villains, Illustrations, Original Character(s), Origins, Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-12-25 17:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18265943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nijicx_but_written/pseuds/nijicx_but_written
Summary: Life is all about opening and shutting doors.You were the first choice that I made for myself.A door I opened all on my own.And a door I can shut if I choose to.I want to be strong, like you.I want to be strong with you.I want to be…Unstoppable





	Intake

_Life is all about opening and shutting doors._   
_Some doors you shut yourself, other times, doors are shut on you._   
_A door shut the day my mother left us._   
_A door shut on me being the eldest daughter, and opened to being a second mother to my three young siblings._

_It’s the same day my dad shut the door on smiling again._  
 _The day the door to my youth was piled high with responsibility, to high for me to get to._  
 _Sometimes, those doors aren’t locked to you at all._  
 _But there’s clutter._  


_So much clutter._  
 _I like to believe, that, if you wait long enough,a door will open itself up to you._  
 _Sometimes, just watching the doors open and close for others is enough._  


_And so I waited…_   
_And I waited…_   
_When I was 19, dad told us he had to go to New York for a conference, we jumped to make all sorts of plans. We would visit all sorts of places together._   
_We’d be a family._   
_He promised._

  
______________________________________________  
In a dim hotel room in New York, the kids sat on the beds reading and playing video games. Nyume checks her watch every now and again as the light outside grows dimmer. The door opens and her father enters,blustery and worn out, the kids excitedly greeting him and bouncing up and down. Without saying hi back he scours the room as Monomiya hangs from one Bicep, and Akane, close behind, tugging the hem of his military suit jacket. Getting up from her chair and trying to contain her excitement, Nyume approaches him quietly from behind with her hands behind her back. A whole day’s worth of anticipation barely contained in her thin frame.

  
“ Did the meeting go well? If you need some time to get ready we still have a little time before the reservation is-”  
“What’s that?”  
Nyume nervously chuckles, trying to ignore the sudden dropping of disappointment from boring a hole in all her hopes.  
“Ah…we’re all supposed to go out to dinner tonight.. You know at the Rain Forest restaurant? You know the one with all the trees inside? We made reservations when we were back home in Japa-”  
“Ah-…Meetings going on late into the night. I just came to get my documents. You can get what you’d like for dinner just make sure they eat and are in bed by 10.”  
“But you sai-”  
“Nyume. I don’t control these things. Bed by 10.”

  
With Documents in hand, her dad kisses her head and detaches from Akane’s grip on his suit jacket. Leaving as soon as he came, leaving behind him a heavy atmosphere that makes each of the kids seem to sink dejectedly. Clinging to the one small fact that he said they could get whatever they wanted they pepped back up. The littlest one jumping up excitedly suggesting they should get pizza and hotdogs ‘just cuz they could’, tugging energetically on Nyume’s cardigan.  
Nyume stood very still and quiet for a long moment. Turning slowly to pick her up.  
“You can get burgers and cotton candy for all I care. You heard him. Sky’s the limit tonight!”  
And with that the air lightened, if only just a little. The kids whirring about the room excitedly as Nyume picked up the phone to dial room service.

  
_______________________________________

  
Later that night, amongst the pizza boxes were the curled up, overfull forms of the kids, each of them resting where they fell undoubtedly from a sugar crash. Nyume peeks in from behind the hotel door, and with a click, turning off the light and shutting the door quietly behind her.  
_______________________________________

  
Outside, the clamorous sounds and lights of a busy New York street collided with her. New York, she observed, seemed to have a physical force that pushed on every sense. She had heard someone say it was “a sensory overload”, and couldn’t help but agree. It was compounding, on top of everything that was happening it was too much to deal with, turning one one heel, and heading towards the nearest dark, quiet place she could find.

  
Rounding the corner of the hotel, she flopped down beside a dented trash can. Pulling up her knees up, and letting everything out into them. There had been so many plans. Having thought this might be a chance for a new start with them all being closer. Each promising attempt to change things simply rebounding. Crying openly and long, the chance for peace and quiet not presenting itself often with three younger siblings to police.  
Itchy.

  
Rubbing her nose slightly as the sensation completely distracts her. A strong scent entering her nose, causing her to sniffle. Leaning back and peaking over the top of the garbage can and freezing.  
There was a man standing there. Smoking a cigarette, his head tilted back and peering up at the windows adjacent to building behind them. Minding his own business.

 

Jerking back to hiding her head in her knees, embarrassed that someone just heard her have her heart out on the grimy New York Alleyway.  
Well, mortified, to be exact.  
It didn’t really matter how long he’d been there.  
A grown man saw her cry her eyes out, he’d seen the culmination of years of failing to change anything, but more importantly he’d seen her in very embarrassing patterned pajamas she’s had since middle school.

 

“Excuse me, I’m sorry but….could you please leave me alone?”  
“I was here first.” He says, taking another puff off his cigarette.  
She makes a face into her knees, he’s right but he could have at least denied it. An aftershock of overwhelming secondary embarrassment washing over her when his response proves without a shadow of a doubt, that she’d just flopped down next to him like a little lost child and wept.  
“‘Sides. This is as private as your gonna get in this part of the city.” He said, puffing away.  
Taking a sideways glance at him, he wasn’t obscenely handsome like some of the other New York men she’d encountered during their trip. Thinking with some cruel comfort that at least it was only a plain man who saw her cry, in her Hello Kitty pajama bottoms with the rip in one knee.  
Nyume pulled her legs up one more time and clung to them. The whole world feeling against her tonight. The crying having left a dull numbness in her chest, providing her with a hopeless kind of bravery she didn’t even realize. Burying her mouth in her knees, mindful not to make the rip bigger, and muttering.  
“….Do you have any brothers or sisters?”  
“A brother and sister”  
“…Older?”  
“Younger brother, older sister”  
“Do you ever…..hate them…for no reason at all?”  
“…No not really.” Nyume sits quietly, feeling incredibly guilty at herself  
“…But my sister probably did.”  
“Your Older sister?”  
The man nodded, to her surprise not seeming overly annoyed that she’s pestering him.  
“Raised us. It wasn’t easy on her, I knew sometimes she resented us for it…So when I started working, I made sure to pay back every cent she wasted on us. All the parties she couldn’t go to, all the places she never got to see. I made sure to set her up real nice when I made something of myself.”  
And just like that, hope bloomed where it hadn’t been able to before.  
The abstract idea that, one day all of her efforts would be recognized, her dad and siblings would congratulate her for stepping in to take over. For stepping in when her mom stepped out. One day, everything might be worth it.  
“Your sister is really lucky…”  
“You could say that…” He scoffed, flicking his butt down on the ground as a light in one of the top windows he’d been watching goes out. Putting the glowing butt out with his foot and putting his hands into his pockets.  
“If you have 15 years to sit around waiting to be lucky, it ain’t a bad trade-off…”

And then he was gone. Vanishing into the chaos of New York traffic. New York and its oppressive “something” swallowing him whole.  
___  
Moving quietly as to not wake up her brothers and sisters, Nyume closed the hotel room door behind her. Sighing in relief when she finds the kids all still passed out amongst the pizza boxes and wrappers from the earlier make-do festivities. Carefully going about cleaning around them, tucking each of them all properly into bed and returning to her place in the dark, in her chair by the window.  
….15 years…  
_______________________________________________________________

  
The visits to the alley became a nightly habit.  
Sometimes the man is there, and sometimes he isn’t. When he is, they don’t say much, occasionally, she brings takeout from the Hotel and the two eat fried noodles framed by gaudy orange street lights.  
During their intermittent conversations Nyume learned many things about him.  
His name was Sho Liu, 21, Chinese/Trinidadian descent. He was quiet and smelled like pears, cigarettes, and boy shampoo, and he only smiles when he lets out the smoke of his cigarette like he’s trying to hide it.  
He was curt, and a bit socially stunted at times and other times flat out rude.  
And he was her only friend in the world.  
But the day to return to Japan came as she knew it had to.

  
_______

  
“Are they not packed yet??”  
Nyume’s Dad shook his sleeve up, peering at his watch and sighing, sweeping in from a last minute meeting as Nyume tried raggedly to wrangle the kids to take another last minute look for toys they missed. Struggling on her own to get all their clothes into their suitcases.  
“They’ll be ready in a sec just-Akane your sock!, right there under the corner of the bed- Just-hold on a sec Dad!”  
It wasn’t an out of the ordinary occurrence when they all had to go somewhere together, that chaos ensued. Her dad making a passing comment at how rowdy in appearance Monomiya looked. Also not an out of the ordinary occurrence. Monomiya always looked like a tornado hit her. She affectionately whispered Monsoon-o-miya, every time her older sisters told her how messy she looked.

Handing the luggage to the hotel staff to add to the cart, Nyume turned tiredly to fix Monomiya’s hair. Hurriedly wiping her face with a damp cloth. Smiling at her tryingly and pushing the token monsoon out of the room to stand with the other two presentable siblings. Following them out and smiling at their dad, in a way, sort of hoping for a thank you, it growing weak when he simply spins on his heels and turns down the hall, muttering at his phone about the shuttle and how 'this one had better be on time’.  
She follows him while holding the kids hands and goes out to load them into the shuttle van headed for the airport. Taking a moment while the hotel staff loaded their luggage into the back, and stealing herself away to peek into the alley. Finding no one there and standing for a long moment.  
“….Goodb-"

“Nyume! The van is here, come on, we’re already late! The others are already strapped in!”  
“Okay!” She called back. Pausing for just another moment before jogging back to the car. Getting In and pulling her seatbelt over her. The door to the van creeping shut. The click of the door signalling her dad to tell the driver to pull out. There was a ‘9 hour gap in planes if they missed it’ after all.  
______________________________________________  
In the car the kids, besides complaining that they were all sat too close together, talked about what they were gonna do when they get back to Japan. It being one of the only conversations her Father would ever opt to join in.  
“Akane needs to enroll in cram school already there is a year long wait list for the good one.“  
“Ah, and Monomiya needs to get re-register for soccer and attend summer practices again.”  
“And you need to decide on a University before the end of summer so that you can attend the cram school to study for their entrance examinations. Have you decided yet?”  
_Plans._  
“I think Tokyo Institute of Technology would be a good fit.”  
_Decisions._  
“Have you looked over the entrance exam workbook for the University of Tokyo yet?”  
_Waiting._  
“Nyume are you listening to me?”  
_Tomorrow,_  
 _The next day,_  
 _Next Month_  
 _Next Year_  
 _15 years…_  
 _…fifteen years…_  


_F i f t e e n Y e a r s._  
Staring at the ground of the van blankly, Nyume sits quietly, the car seeming to sway around her, it all suddenly coming into focus when the van suddenly comes to a stop. Derailed from his own conversation, her father turned in his seat to look ahead, there being a line of cars backed up down the whole block. His own trail of thought switching tracks towards the traffic and how 'they are really going to be late now’.  
Reaching down and letting her seat belt loose, Nyume opens the door.  
“Nyume close the door! You’re letting all the air conditioning out. Nyume-”  
She got out.  
Standing for a minute, she let the once chaotic sounds and sights that is New York traffic wash over her. The sounds of her father and the innocent babbling of the kids fading out She closes the door slowly.  
Picking her way before she knows it back through the stalled cars full of strangers, she felt her chest. She could suddenly feel her heart in her ears.  
Pounding.  
An “all or nothing” sort of beat. Faster and faster-  
Honk Honk!  
Jumping sharply, a few cars honking their horns at the cars ahead of them, for a moment she thought she saw the van, the van with her whole life inside of it and turns a corner. The full rush of adrenaline engulfing everything and taking off at a full sprint down unfamiliar streets.  
Rushing around the cars to try and find her, her father stands panicked, cursing and remembering his kids are in the car with a stranger, before rushing back. Having no choice but to get back into the car and call the cops on the way to the terminal.  
________________________________________________________________  
As night falls, Nyume walked with heavy feet, staring up at the sky, or at least, what she could see of it through light pollution and power cables. Drifting to and from thoughts like a boat alone on the ocean. Stopping and turning dazedly to find a hotel, the hotel, and walking backwards to look up at it. Allowing the angry shouts of a bicyclist to roll off of her effortlessly as the stands in the middle of the bike path to get the full picture.

She’d never just been on her own before, the hotel she’d spent so much time in in its entirety for the first time. Thinking it really is a beautiful building, her eyes naturally drawn to the pools of shadow formed from the spotlights to the alley along its west side. Finding herself at the mouth of it before she even realized she’d walked there, to see him. Plain Sho. Standing where he always stands. Walking in and foregoing her little nook on the other side of the trashcan and instead, settling in to stand beside him. Feeling something lock into place in her chest. It not being a particular attachment to this place or this person, but thinking that it simply felt right to be here.  
“You look awful happy.”  
“…Yeah…I think I am…I don’t really know yet….” She mumbled, turning to look at him from eye level for the first time.

The angle change really not changing her opinion on his plainness but finding something attractive, or maybe interesting about the tired lines on his face.

Having never got the chance to have a crush on anyone and all the crushes that people had on her in middle school and before, never getting the chance to go anywhere as she was always taking care of her siblings. Her eyes shifting to his cigarette and speaking before she can truly put the idea through a filter.  
“….Can…I have a puff offa that?“ Sho understandably raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged, handing her the cigarette. Turning his attention away looking back up at the windows above, but shifting his eyes ever so slightly to watch her in his periphery. Watching as this, 5'2 at best, prepschool looking girl, inspects the cigarette like an alien artifact, and brings it to her mouth. Taking an inhale and holding it in her lungs, before instantly hacking up a storm, holding the cigarette up like a white flag as she flounders for breath.  
Snorting and burying his nose in his shoulder as he leans to take it, it not being fortified enough and the laugh breaks through anyways. Seeing this girl in a frumpy cardigan in traditional styled hair and no makeup try a cigarette for the first time being the first genuine laugh he’s had in awhile. Taking the cigarette and holding it between his teeth as he helps her gathers her bearings. Watching with a stupid grin as she immediately straightens up, trying to pass herself off like it wasn’t a big deal.  
“First, don’t hold it that long, Second, maybe one big leap at a time huh?”  
“-cough-…What?”  
“You ran away right? That’s probably enough for tonight…”  
She stood for a long time with his words in her head. Not understanding it but feeling…different. Finding comfort that someone noticed how she was feeling. Noticed, her at all. For once not having to scream on deaf ears to be heard. Looking up suddenly when he flicks his finished cigarette on the ground, wondering how much time had passed as he pushes it into the pavement with his foot. Turning around, pulling his hood back, calling back to her since she didn’t follow suit. “You uh…wanna sleep in the alleyway or…?”  
________________________________________________________________

That night, Sho took her to a friend of his, a young Chinese girl going to University with another female roomate. When she asked why he decided there, she was shocked at the traditionalist answer she got.  
“It wouldn’t be appropriate” She remembered him spouting in an annoyed tone, as they drove through the streets of New York at night. Her new roomates explaining to her once she was there that if she stayed with him in his bachelor apartment it would look bad.  
When he’s not working, they see all of New York.  
Or, more accurately, he says he’s going somewhere and she follows him, all over New York.

________________________________________________________________

Your weekly shopping trip is not a time when most expect to be the day your life changes forever.  
Balancing bags on both her arms and even more hanging by her wrists, Nyume heads back to her shared flat, having just finished her shift at the dry cleaners. Having finished her last shift before the weekend and takes a deep gulp of air. Ostensibly it tastes terrible as she passes another trash-filled alley, but New York had grown on her immensely. The sights, the smells, the ground rumbling beneath her. The ground rumbling beneath her?  
Although in New York that not being necessarily strange, large trucks rolling by being large enough to shake some of the older buildings and infrastructure.  
But this rumbling was different, rhythmic.

She kneels down thinking it to be like an earthquake like back home. Placing her hand on the ground and aside from thinking she really shouldn’t be touching the filthy New York sidewalk, thinking to herself that it almost sounds like footsteps.

No sooner had the thought been processed in her mind did a massive mechanical mass storm past her on the street. Bulldozing cars and leaving the sounds of wailing metal and the tinkle of glass in its wake. She had been fortunate enough to avoid the almost daily occurrence of villain attacks in the city up until this point, but her curiosity seizing the better of her. Reasoning to herself that if anything, she’ll have a fun story she can tell Sho that didn’t involve some old man yelling at her about dry cleaning receipts.  
Peering around the corner of an apartment building, through the settling debris, she can make out a regular sized man, locked into the arms of some sort of man-like machine. They struggle to get the upper hand on one another, and to her surprise the smaller man steps forwards pushing the metal hulk back.  
Reasoning with the child within her was useless. There was a battle of quirks happening right in front of her and it was awesome. Watching the much smaller man trade blows with the same amount of force as the towering mechanized man. Thinking to herself that he must weigh tons, and despite neither bearing the hallmark of pro heroes, rooting for the smaller one as the underdog.

Making jab-like motions from behind the corner she watched the two trade powerful blows. Getting knocked around a few times by the smaller man, the metal hulk collapses. The much smaller of the two suddenly bending down and lifting the mech above his head, ‘a finisher’, she couldn’t help but think, and turns. Sending him hurling in her direction. Dropping the groceries in an instant and ducking back, covering her head as the mech sails down the road. Tearing the asphalt like it was paper and leaving a trail almost half a block long. After not hearing anything for a long moment, she steels herself up and peeks around the edge.  
When the dust settles the men are yelling at each other. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s familiar. Having only learned bits and pieces of Cantonese from Sho but definitely identifying it being spoken, hearing the small man refer to the metal one as “Mechanize”.  
Upon hearing his name the metal man sluggishly lifts his head from his pillow made from a freshly crushed smart car.  
And…  
There are some things in this life, you know just by seeing them.  
There are some things in this life, that even quirks or super powers can’t cover up.  
Those lines.  
Those tired,  
tired lines.  
Nyume’s clothes fell to the the ground as her body lost its shape. Wafting over and into a ventilation shaft on the mech’s rib cage, she slipped in between the grates, following narrow passageways and snaking, overlapping tubes towards something that looked like a drum. Concentrating her energy and speaking.  
“Sho.”  
A long pause preceded her, she speaks again, the footsteps of the other man with the power quirk getting stronger.  
It was a long moment before she registered a response, Mechanize’s body lurching up to try and get to its feet in vain. His body, every vein, organ and bone had shifted to an in-organic system. Replaced with tubing, and engines and pumps.

Able to tell without him needing to say anything that his body is running out of steam. It being fairly likely that he can’t hold the form for too long. Watching through his ducts as his hand slams down on a car adjacent to them and picks it up. The leaking fuel raining down over them and holding open his jaws. Collecting it, feeling the sputtering sound of an engine attempting to restart.  
Something she could do.  
She followed the sound of gasoline and filtered herself into the engine, concentrating and letting out a concentrated burst of energy. The engine sputtering to life in an instant just as the smaller man reached them, Sho sending the car he was holding sailing straight into him.  
________________________________________________________________

  
Exhausted, Sho stumbles over to the alleyway as the two separate from one another. He returns to his normal size and collapses with his back against the wall, when he turns he finds Nyume with her knees to her chest beside him, looking away sharply when he realizes she’s without her clothes. The two of them sitting quietly for a moment as they regain their breath, Nyume snorting at herself, her snort being the spark that leads to them both laughing hysterically despite exhaustion.

 

Only people as stupid as the two of us could have gotten this far without realizing this.

Three weeks later in the month of May, Sho and Nyume marry.

 

________________________________________________________________

  
“You should meet my sister.” Sho said.  
They were sitting in the same small Chinese restaurant they always did on Thursday nights. It had been a few weeks since the quiet ceremony in the same venue they sit now. Sho still having not learned how to not play with his ring.  
“She didn’t come to the ceremony right? We probably should. She’s kinda my inlaw after all…”  
—–  
The next day Sho drove them both to the manor house his sister resided in. Getting out and standing at the gate, ringing the gilded buzzer and putting his hands in his pockets. Looking out across the expansive front yard and garden to the biggest window on the west side of the house. Following his eyes Nyume watched it curiously.  
Nobody answered the buzzer, but the curtains in the window shifted. From between them she could partially make out the figure of a young woman looking out at them.  
“Wave:” Sho said.  
Nyume raised an eyebrow at him but did so anyways, the glint off of her gold ring carrying as she waved to her with a smile. With a flutter, the curtains shut again and there was stillness.  
Still, Nobody answered the buzzer.  
Sho turned and opened the passenger door for her calmly. “We should get going.”  
“Wait, that was it? She’s not going to come out??” Nyume asked.  
“I told you, that I set her up real nice when I made something of myself.” Sho closed the door on her and crossed over to the drivers side. Getting in and lighting a new cigarette as he put the car in drive.  
“I never said she liked the person I made of myself.” ________________________________________________________________  
Shortly after the Mechanize incident, Sho told her everything.  
He had been a member of the triads since he was around 16 years old. His largely absent father had been an incredibly active member and his mom had left with another man who promised her a better life. His parents weren’t married and didn’t especially get along before then, so his father hadn’t felt it exactly necessary to start taking responsibility for his kids now.  
Sho’s quirk was Mechanization. A transforming quirk in which his body shifts all organic function to mechanized function. His organic makeup turning to metal, rubber and steel. Creating a fully mechanical body from top to bottom. The downside of his quirk, is that he requires constant fuel consumption to keep up with his bodies demand.  
My body can lose all physical mass and become a constantly emitting mass of gasoline like substance. My mothers quirk.

Nyume knew all this before they were married. She knew the fight Mechanize had gotten into in the streets that day had been a turf dispute. The window Sho had been watching when they met, a common meeting room for a rival subsect.  
It changed nothing.  
As long as I’m constantly emitting. He’s unstoppable.  
We are unstoppable.  
“I wanted her to have everything” Sho had said that day, during their quiet ride home in the car.  
Living with his siblings and his grandmother had never been easy. It was a struggle every day.  
For love, for attention, for money. A door opened to the world of money and power, and he refused to let it be closed to him. He put his sister into a big house, with a nice car, and all the things she could ever ask for, at the cost of her respect for him.  
“Do you ever regret it?”  
“….No…I would’ve regretted growing up and not being able to do anything. She’s done her work. She deserves a rest.”

  
________________________________________________________________  
_I understand._  
 _I understand that._  
 _I understand the both of you._  
 _When opportunity knocks, you don’t ask “Who’s there”._  
 _Life is all about opening and shutting doors._  
 _You were the first choice that I made for myself._  
 _A door I opened all on my own._  
 _And a door I can shut if I choose to._  
 _I want to be strong, like you._  
 _I want to be strong with you._  
 _I want to be…_

 

**Unstoppable.**

**Author's Note:**

> All art in this story belongs to me @nijicx on tumblr and instagram  
> This story includes my original villains for the BNHA Fandom, all characters that appear in this story belong to me~
> 
> With that out of the way, this is the first story I've written since like...grade school and I was encouraged to write it by friends of mine on the BNHA Amino, so this goes out to them :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
